Sunday, April 08, 2012

Cisse double sinks Swans

Swansea City 0 - 2 Newcastle Utd

Two goals by Papiss Cisse ensured our winning run continued and made it a very Good Friday for the Newcastle Utd against a slick Swansea team.

With Danny Guthrie injured, the Silver Fox opted to bring Davide Santon back into the side, pushing Spidermag up alongside Mr T and Dreamboat in midfield. Tactically, we sat back from the start, dropping off Swansea and allowing them to knock the ball around in their own half.

However, with our number nine boasting seven goals in seven games before the match, we were always likely to pose Swansea problems on the break. Just five minutes into the game Spidermag knocked a loose ball forward to Dreamboat, whose first-time pass saw the Swans' defence part like the Red Sea before Moses, allowing Cisse to charge between them and take a touch before knocking the ball confidently past Michel Vorm to give us the lead.

The rest of the half saw Swansea enjoying the lion's share of possession, with much of their play flowing through Gylfi Sigurdsson, but ultimately left frustrated by our dogged defence, which meant they were restricted to shots from distance which largely left Krul untroubled.

With Mr T withdrawn at half-time nursing a slight hamstring injury, Raylor was pressed into midfield service, and the second half picked up where the first had left off, with Swansea, and Sigurdsson in particular, dominating possession but unable to carve any great chances for their strikers.

With Shane Ferguson on for Demba Ba, our lead always looked quite thin until HBA broke forward and found Dreamboat, his ball again picked out Cisse who, falling over, managed to chip the ball brilliantly over the advancing Vorm and just under the crossbar, doubling our lead and knocking the stuffing out of the home side.

The only further point of note after Cisse's second was the arrival of Dan Gosling in place of Dreamboat, the latter, like Mr T, apparently nursing a slight muscle strain. Hopefully, both will have recovered in time for tomorrow's game against Bolton, as the midfield cupboard is starting to look a little bare.

That said, if Cisse can keep his scoring run going (which now stands at a phenomenal nine in eight games), we can continue to keep our eyes firmly on the teams ahead of us in the league.

Other reports: BBC, Guardian

Labels: ,

Share

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home